IS IT a band, is it a group, is it a collective or an ensemble? No it’s the one and only Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, the makers of the most essential music that may have passed you by.
Revolving around the mercurial bassist/composer Vincent Bertholet and emerging from the Geneva avant music scene in 2006, the defiantly European OTPMD (it’s shorter) remain an eclectic loose gathering of musicians. There may be six or 18 members at any one time but there is one constant, the brilliant projection of a dazzling kaleidoscope of post-punk, global beats, free-flow jazz, brass band and afro rhythms.
Now looming on the horizon comes their first album since 2018’s John Parrish-produced Sauvage Formes, with the fittingly cryptic moniker, We’re OK. But We’re Lost Anyway’ (due July 2nd via Bongo Joe). And for advance warning the Orchestre have launched their first enticing single from the record into the digital ocean. ‘
“Beginning” has that characteristic krautrock lurch and roll, stretching out on bass groove repetition, clattering percussion and minimal guitar twists. Topped with urgent vocal proclamations from Jo Burke and pumped with joyfully abandoned brass lines, it’s a track that is the perfect introduction to the promise that Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’s latest long-playing exhibit is destined to deliver.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’s We’re OK. But We’re Lost Anyway will be released on July 2nd by Bongo Joe digitally, on CD, and on black and highly limited bloody marbled vinyl (ten only remaining at the time of writing) and is available to pre-order now at Bandcamp.
